Albanian Higher Education Strategy

Since its inception, the governments of 29 European countries (member states of the Bologna Declaration in 1999) had as their main target the creation of a common and coherent system of Higher Education Area in Europe (EHEA). The main intention for the creation of a ‘European Education Area’ was the fostering of student mobility and employability in order to strengthen competition and to make the European Higher Education more attractive. The main focus of this paper is the analysis of the National Periodic Reports for the period 2004-2009, the Albanian National Strategy for Higher Education 2014-2020, and a study on the presence of Quality Assurance Institutions in Higher Education, based on the report from the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Exécutive Agency. The methodology chosen by the authors of this paper is to divide into four groups the countries that have established a national or private Quality Assurance Institution as part of their higher education system in order to assess whether the existence/presence of such institutions act as key instruments to ensuring the quality of higher education. It is recommended that Albania even though listed in the group of countries establishing a National Quality Assurance Agency, can ‘maybe’ follow the model of those European countries that have established a further Private Quality Assurance Agency in addition to the National Quality Assurance Agency. It is believed that the further establishment of a carefully chosen private quality assurance agency (ENQA or EQAR) would ensure quality and guarantee transparency in higher education.